he brain, and nothing find!
Consider. When the memory is richly stored,
How apt the victim of redundant knowledge to be bored!
When Nothing fills the chambers of the heart and brain,
Then negative enjoyment comes with pleasures in her train!
Descending on the clods of sense like summer rain.

"Knowledge, 'tis said, gives power, and so it often does;
Knowledge makes sorrow, too, around our pillows buzz.
In debt I am, with little cash; I know it--and am sad.
Of course, if I were ignorant of this--how glad!
A loving friend, whom once I knew in glowing health,
Has broken down, and also, somehow, lost his wealth.
How sad the knowledge makes me! Better far
In ignorance to live, than hear of things that jar,
And think of things that are not,--not of things that are.

"`If ignorance is bliss,' the poet saith--why `if?'
Why doubt a fact so clearly proven, stubborn, stiff?
The heavy griefs and burdens of the world around,
The hideous tyranny by which mankind is ground,
The earthquake, tempest, rush of war, and wail of woe,
Are all as though they were not--if I do not know!
Wrapped in my robe of ignorance, what _can_ I miss?
Am I not saved from all--and more than all--of this?
Do I not revel in a regal realm of bliss?"

"Bravo! Buzzby," cried the Captain, "but, I say, Alf, don't it seem to
smack rather too much of selfishness?"

"Of course it does, uncle. I do not think Buzzby always sound in
principle, and, like many poets, he is sometimes confused in his logic."

"You're right, Benjy, the land is clear enough now," remarked the
Captain, whose interest in Buzzby was not profound, and whose feelings
towards logic bordered on the contemptuous, as is often the case with
half-educated men, and, strange to say, sometimes with highly-educated
men, as well as with the totally ignorant--so true is it that extremes
meet!

In the course of a couple of hours the sledges drew near to the island,
which proved to be a large but comparatively low one, rising not more
than a hundred feet in any part. It was barren and ragged, with patches
of reindeer moss growing in some parts, and dwarf willows in others.
Myriads of sea-birds made it their home, and these received the invaders
with clamorous cries, as if they knew that white men were a dangerous
novelty, and objected to the innovation.

Despite their remonstrances, the party landed, and the Eskimos hurried
over the rocks to that par